Saturday, August 12, 2017

(This
is an essay I wrote in Portuguese* to commemorate the World Day of the
Environment on June 5. I read this passage to the County Council members in
Cocalzinho on June 9.)

We all live in the environment. Our families, our children, our animals
– all of us live in the midst of the natural environment. Air, earth, water,
plants, woods, the sun, the rain, the wind, all of this is our natural world.

You don’t even think about it – you walk out into the middle of the
environment. It’s all there from the very start. When we were children we
learned to take for granted the earth, the air, the water, the sun, the rain.

It happens that
sometimes we do things that hurt or damage our mother. She seems so strong, so
powerful, but she’s not always so perfect and sweet. However we recognize that
she gave us our life, took care of us. Worthy sons and daughters look after
their mothers.

Likewise worthy
human beings look after the environment, take care of the earth, the water, the
air. We recognize that our well-being, our very life, depends on Nature – and
when we damage it we’re damaging our own selves. Bared earth no longer produces
fruits, and the water dries up. Polluted water can no longer serve as drinking
water, and impure air ends up killing. On our natural environment depends the
viability of our living area and the very survival of our children and
grandchildren. Let’s take care of it.

We’re
more than half a year into the incredible Trump-era and looking at the tearing
up of many hard-won advances in the fields of social justice and the
environment in the United States of America. It’s like the take-over by a
ruthless agro-business of a piece of land that has been carefully tended for
fifty years.

We
live in something of an island here in the Cerrado of Central Brazil. Fifty
miles away and creeping toward us are huge fields of soy and corn, and the
tomato business regularly plows new tracts of land, several acres at a time,
for a one-year crop, moving to a new tract the next year and leaving the
abandoned land bare and fruitless. But right where we are small farmers still
maintain their diversified lands – one or two hundred acres of pasture,
orchards, vegetable gardens, and yearly subsistence crops of corn and manioc.
And acres of shrub-studded cerrado and riparian woods still stand.

Our
little fenced in half-acre within my son’s one-hundred acre farm is surrounded
by pasture and woods. Cows stick their heads through the fence to nibble at the
‘greener’ grass on our side, and our chickens roam during their hours of afternoon
freedom into the pasture as well as into the woods.

Not
long ago this 40-inch rattlesnake wandered onto our property, where the grass
had been cut for hay, to bathe in the winter sun. Guy walked right past it,
within ten inches, on his way back from the goat pen, and he reluctantly killed
it, with a hoe, because of the danger it represents to us and all our animals.

The
dry season has settled in, with temperatures around 70° F in the daytime and as
low as 45° at night. The blue skies often have no clouds at all and the sun is
very hot this close to the Equator (16˚ latitude south), though the breeze and shade keep us cool. Humidity varies between 30% in the daytime and 80% at night. There’s no
danger yet of our water supply running out, but we remain watchful because we
know that the water table is low and it might not rain for another three or
four months. Our bananas are taking forever to ripen but the bougainvillea puts
on a radiant show.

Banana prata - my favorite variety

Banana marmelo - good for frying and cooking green in stews

I planted this bougainvillea in 2013

We’ve
welcomed several visitors in June and July. First was a couch surfer from
nearby Anapolis, who rode his bike the 50 miles to spend the night in our cob
house. It was his first experience as a couch surfer and our first as hosts.

José biked 80 miles from Anapolis to take advantage of our couch surfing offer (couchsurfing.com)

Then
came the long-awaited vist from my son, Zeke, who lives in the Boston area, and
his two sons, Luke (14) and Isaiah (11). What a wonderful treat. Zeke first
came to this farm when he was a baby, in 1974.

Zeke and Greta in 1974.

Luke, Guy, Greta, Isaiah and Zeke, in 2017

They stayed in the cob house.

Luke warms up in the morning sun.

Isaiah enjoys the shade in the afternoon.

My granddaughter, Camila, who lives in Brasilia, came out to the farm to spend several days with her cousins.

This is before the fourth puppy was born - a full six hours later than the others.

I knew she was pregnant but thought the
puppies wouldn’t arrive until late in July, two weeks after my grandsons' departure. But she was very antsy one night, keeping us awake, and on July 8 I realized that
her behavior over the last couple of days probably meant she was due to
whelp. Sure enough – that day she birthed four puppies, two males and two females, to everyone’s delight. She’s proving to be an excellent mother.

"Be careful with those babies, boys."

Cob house update

Work
on the cob house stopped during the month of August – we’re preparing for the final wall to go up in
August. But a lot happened in May and June.

Guy, the designer

Removing the support for the arch.

Greta tries out the new space.

Luke keeps his stuff in the semi-finished alcove.

The floor in these two areas got covered with another layer of cob.

We put in a cob bench in the living room.

And this bench in the master bedroom.

Preview of plans for August

The final wall, to enclose the living room and mini-kitchen, should be up by the end of August.

In addition to two doors we'll have two window in this wall.

Next photo from this angle will be very different. I'll miss the open space.